


the sweet sound of vulnerability (not meant for your ears)

by kyla45



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-19
Updated: 2013-06-19
Packaged: 2017-12-15 11:21:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,629
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/848962
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kyla45/pseuds/kyla45
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He couldn't bring himself to turn back the way he'd come.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the sweet sound of vulnerability (not meant for your ears)

Sobel wasn’t an overly curious being by nature. He wasn’t invasive of his men’s personal lives because he was _interested_ in them, but because they didn’t _have_ personal lives when training with him. He wasn’t curious so much as he was strict, with a penchant for punishment and withholding weekend passes.

He was nobody's babysitter. It was his job to break these men and build them back up into something exceptional. Of course he had a keen eye for detail, he needed to, in order to do his job.

It had always been something he prided himself on.

\--

Walking down the narrow streets of Aldbourne in the dead of night wasn’t his idea of a good time, but he was restless. His men were restless. He knew himself well enough to know he wouldn’t be getting any sleep unless his body bullied his mind into submission.

Fresh air and exercise was the only remedy therefore.

It hadn’t occurred to him someone else might have the same idea.

As he reached the end of an especially barren street, with the beginning of a farm’s pasture on his immediate right, he realized he was on the outskirts of town.

Frustrated with himself for not noticing he’d gone so far, he was about to turn on his heel and march back the way he’d come.

He was about to, except just then he heard a noise, loud in the relative silence that had settled over the place like a blanket. It was nearby, close enough he immediately stopped his feet and held his breath, on alert. After a few moments, he was certain there was no danger.

But despite himself, despite his instincts urging him to turn back and get that sleep he was missing, well.

He was curious.

\--

In retrospect, he had to admit he wasn’t ruling his actions with logic. He should have turned around and damn his austerity, his need to find fault or excuse everywhere. He should have considered, with far too many weekend passes kept, and the promise of battle looming heavy over everyone, a bit of privacy would not go amiss. He should have realized, just this once, the escapades of his men were none of his business.

But he found his feet bringing him closer to the source nonetheless, quiet, carefully.

\--

He hid, waiting for his eyes adjust to the dark. At first all he saw were shapes, two bodies pressed intimately, but the night obscured features and details. He had crept as close as he dared, unsure why he was bothering to hide his presence at all.

There came a breathy whine, bit off in a hurry.

Being so used to hearing the exhausted noises of his men, he didn’t have to be hear much to know there was no pain in the sound.

Because as chaste and self-disciplined as he was, he could still identify the obvious -- the dulcet, honey tones of pleasure, tremulous in nature -- a sound nearly syrupy thick in texture, for all it could‘ve dripped. A sound he’d thought reserved for the privacy of closed doors.

A sound he’d not thought to hear uttered in the voce of Dick Winters.

\--

It wasn’t so alarming, later, when he carefully laid out the numerous interactions of Nixon and Winters like a road map.

He’d never been good at reading the damn things, true, but this particular lay of coordinates and grids made easy sense, he could trace his fingers over known points and skim them over the ones he didn’t know, but always he ended up at the same destination.

Sobel wondered, in the quiet of his room, why he‘d never noticed this thing that stretched _universes_ on a map.

\--

His eyes widened and he sucked in a sharp breath. He listened harder, as if it might refute his hearing somehow.

But it was unmistakably Winters, above the obscene sound of kissing.

He hadn’t pegged Winters as the type of man for public displays of lewdness -- well, he hadn’t pegged the man as anything but bashfully private to begin with, if the way he went red with the men’s teasing was any indication.

“Nix,” and what he would have given to hear Winters so _vulnerable_ (even mentally he tripped on the word).

Dazed, he realized this must be what trust was.

Because he’d never heard Winters like this, not once, not when he’d shouted in his face, drilled him hard, made him lead the men up Currahee again, double time, just as soon as they‘d reached the bottom -- the man was perpetually unflappable and composed.

“I want to touch you,” and that was Nixon, there was no doubting it, even if his voice was gravelly and foreign to Sobel‘s ears. “Tell me I can touch you,” and he sounded desperate, like Winters’ permission for this one simple thing mattered more than life itself.

Winters made a noise then, a whimpering kind of noise around the word ‘yes.’ It was as heated as Nixon’s entreaty, and so saturated with want that Sobel felt his pulse rise despite himself.

“Yes, Lew, _Lew_ \--”

\--

Sobel was a man who appreciated a well tuned piano, the resonating notes of a lone bagpipe ringing in the early morning dawn, the thunder of so many dozen feet marching in unison. There was something lovely in the mechanical slide of an M-1 being reassembled at lightning speed.

Sobel enjoyed the way things sounded when they worked properly.

There was no measured harmony in the faint shifting and rustling of ODs, the stilted breathlessness of two men fighting to absorb each other by force of will alone.

There wasn’t anything peaceful or lulling in the harsh curses from Nixon, that were somehow achingly soft in utterance, or the way Winters gasped half formed sentences strewn together with quiet moans. Skin on skin sounded messy and loud in the dark.

The panting breath that was a constant disharmony, that built to muffled sobs and choked attempts at silence, was neither composed or regulated.

Yet Sobel listened.

\--

The darkness obscured all but shape -- in that, at least, they had been smart. There were no distant streetlamps, no house lights, nothing.

He was half-blind standing there, fingers pressing too hard against the bark of the tree he hid behind.

He watched them slump down against the wall as one, spent, exhausted -- and he knew their feet could have kept them standing (and he should know what his men were capable of, after training them). He felt a startling burst of envy that they opted for that weakness, together.

He kept watching, kept listening. Imagined Nixon between Winters’ legs, pressed close and intimate as they both regained their breath.

He was waiting.

\--

When they didn’t draw apart and leave in surly, ashamed silence, he felt something ugly flaring in his chest.

\--

Sobel clenched his jaw, heard Nixon chortle a laugh that was carefree and mischievous.

“Jesus, you’re amazing.”

“Sweet talk is redundant at this point,” Winters points out dryly, but there’s a pleased note in his voice, too.

“I am king of redundancies, you’d best be getting used to it.”

“Go on, then, your majesty,” Winters’ voice is amused and lazy and unbearably affectionate.

“Your wish is my command,” he begins. “You’re _perfect_ , you’re breathtaking, God, you’re--”

He hears Winters’ embarrassed “enough!” and it only makes Nixon laugh. He can tell, by the abrupt halting of Nixon’s low snigger, that Winters has endeavored to shut him up forcibly.

He knows they’re kissing again, in earnest now, between quiet-loud laughs. He can even hear a startled little hitching of breath.

“Jesus, Dick. What I wouldn’t give for a bed,” Nixon breathes, and the pining is evident in his words.

“Yeah.”

There’s a heartbeat of silence.

“C‘mon trooper, chin up,” Nixon says suddenly, and he’s clearly reading some mood in Winters that Sobel can’t hear or sense or even begin to fathom. “There will be days of sleeping in till noon, days where you’ll _have_ to. You’re going to do me in until I ache everywhere and I swear Dick, I’m going to make you scream.”

“Big talk,” it’s an odd mix of forced levity and longing that Sobel can hear clear as day -- this, at least, he can understand.

“It’s a promise. I love the sounds you make for me,” and he can imagine the crooked-soft grin Nixon liked to flash at Winters, can imagine he’s flashing it now.

“I’ll hold you to it,” he says so quietly Sobel has to strain to hear.

They’re kissing again. Winters make a sound for Nixon.

They don’t stop kissing.

\--

Sobel crept away, making his way back to the well-lit streets and lonely cobblestones.

He stopped to stare at the moon, and the half-baked notion he had of reporting the both of them fades away.

He knows somehow, with no small amount of resentment, that even if he got them dishonorably discharged, Winters would still stand tall in front of him, unashamed and as unflappable as ever.

He understood that Nixon held the rights to Winters’ vulnerability.

He understood they belonged to each other in ways that went beyond hurried sex.

He understood they probably loved each other.

\--

Sobel starts the long walk back to his quarters, grateful for how his bed at last seemed inviting, how his bones felt heavy with weariness.

They’re all going off to war, to death and mayhem and blood. Let them dream of noontime laziness and soft beds.

Let them have each other.

He knows it’ll be punishment enough, the trials the fighting will bring, the possibility they will die, or worse yet, one survive while the other does not.

He _knows_ that.

He hates them both, anyway.

And when he lies down under his covers that night, he doesn’t think about why.

**Author's Note:**

> Er, I had no idea I had to write this, but I guess I did? It was less porn-filled than I figured my first voyeurism fic would be. It _was_ , however, really hard to pick a spot, or a moment, where Winters and Nixon could get intimate while still allowing for Sobel to observe unobtrusively within the timeline of the show. So seriously just run with me on this. I'll say it's set like right before Sobel gets transferred.
> 
> Logistics wise, outdoor sex is definitely _not_ Winter's thing, and Nixon would have done all the convincing of course. 'I've found this place behind a barn. It's dark as sin on a night with no moon and more importantly, utterly isolated.' I figure their moments are all stolen and hurried, so all he has to do is break out a hushed 'please, Dick, I _miss_ you,' and bam, Winters' pupils are wide and he's allowing himself to feel as needy as Nix sounds. It's been a while since they've really been alone and so a few hours later they're sneaking through the night like a couple of teenage boys. They're imbeciles, basically, is what I'm saying. They're imbeciles in love.
> 
> So anyway! If you liked, don't hesitate to leave a word ~


End file.
